The Wind Will Carry Your Burden
by StrawberryFunk
Summary: One day, Jade hears the word "run", and she does.


One day, Jade hears the nerves in her toes and the voices in the walls and the silence of her home whisper _run_, and she does.

She bolts down the side of her mountain and she couldn't stop if she had to, _slow and careful on your way down_ was what Grandpa always told her and now she realizes why; the momentum she has built up is right behind her and pushing her forward, it is a wind that she has become a part of, it is a set of wheels underneath her feet that have her barely skirting the edges of the spiraled pathway carved into the earth and with each turn she begs that she doesn't lose her footing and _thud, thud, thud, _right down to the ground below like a fragile little rag doll. Even when her feet are treading on a soft grass carpet instead of the rocky mountain terrain she doesn't slow down, she _can't;_ she is the wind and the birds and the storm-willed tides, there isn't the time or the reason to stop.

The trees disagree and as she runs by them they reach out and snag her hair in their spindly branches but she fights them, _let me go let me go let me go _and she writhes and kicks for only seconds and she has beat her forest assailants away, carrying mementos of the strife in the twigs and leaves of a makeshift laurel around her head. It occurs to her as she beats her way through a thicket in front of her with eyes shut tight and arms covered in the kisses of thorns she uses as shields that she doesn't know where she's going. In part it is because she is lost, she has never been so far from home before, but namely it is a lack of direction; there is an entire world out there and she doesn't know where to even begin, she doesn't _care_. Anywhere will be perfect as long as it is far, far away from here, away from a tower too large and too empty for such a small girl, away from vast forests and fields where the only other life comes as roots that trip her up as she moves and trees that try to hold her back, away from the body of the man who was her grandfather stuffed like just another taxidermy game head and placed like a trophy in the foyer, away from all of it.

(She was just a little girl, she didn't know, even as she was gently shaking the cold corpse's shoulder and calling "grandpa, grandpa?" she didn't yet grasp the idea of death, it had all been so much for her to bear.)

She can't take it anymore; it's all been her own personal fairy-tale, a delusion she used as a security blanket, but she's done, done, done! She won't live like this, there are places and _people_, living breathing societies, beyond the silent flora that are the only other things that breathe on this island prison, and she is going to see them, to finally—

The water stops her only after it has seeped through her shoes and soaked her feet, snapping her back into consciousness. For a few moments she stands in the water and stares blankly ahead of her to where the two infinities of the sky and the ocean meet, and what she has done and what she cannot do dawns on her. Slowly, she backs onto the sand and she wonders just how far the sea goes on for. Certainly too much for her to swim. She couldn't flag down a boat, either, if one were to come this way, and she knows that they never do.

This island is her prison. The waves are the iron bars.

All at once Jade is overcome by the exhaustion that she thought had been thrown away into the wind with the rest of her during her run. She collapses onto the beach and breathes slowly, carefully, deeply, and then she draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around herself and she cries. She muffles the sobs in the fabric of her skirt but they are still loud and her nose runs and her body shakes and it is the exact opposite of the princess tears she sees in her beloved picture books.

She cries and cries and cries, tells herself that she will go home and apologize to grandpa for leaving without telling him and without taking the rifle he has trained her to use and keep by her side, tells herself it's all going to be okay, and she cries and cries and cries until there's nothing left and she withers into sleep, and she lies there on the shoreline until someone comes with a flash of green light and brings her back into her bed, and she dreams of gold.


End file.
